Infrared scanner

Does anybody use an infrared scanner for a plant electrical maintenance?

It looks attractive to take infrared pictures of electrical cabinets where we can see overheated elements, but costly. It’s about $50000 for scanner, software, training, etc.

How will it pay off?

One of a bad scenario: spent $50000, spent time to take pictures, spent time to prepare report and work orders for preventative maintenance, spent money for new equipment that might work another couple years (or may be couple days), spent time for PM itself.

Finally company will not receive any extra cash from operation.

Conversely, if we replace parts then they break down and concentrate efforts to make everything nice and clean, it might be more optimal approach?

Thank you.

$50,000 for something that generates zero revenue? Good luck on that. Very few ops guys I've ever cleared stuff through would jump at it.

Thermographic imaging of your electrical installations is well worth the effort and has prevented breakdown and unplanned down time in my plants. However we could not justify to the accountants the purchase of the equipment to do this ourselves. We do however use a contract company to do this for us. They give us a detailed report with photos both normal color and infrared pointing to problem areas.

The job is done 6 monthly and takes about 8 hours on our site.
Cost is about $1200.00 AU

CroCop said:

$50,000 for something that generates zero revenue? Good luck on that. Very few ops guys I've ever cleared stuff through would jump at it.

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Thank you for the first negative opinion.

I am an electrician, working for the big plant and I am not happy to be involved in useless work like taking pictures. Hopefully my boss rather will by some new PLC.

Alex Pel said:

Thank you for the first negative opinion.

I am an electrician, working for the big plant and I am not happy to be involved in useless work like taking pictures. Hopefully my boss rather will by some new PLC.

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If it's negative opinions you're after, I'm the man.

Seriously, however, what does it do for your company? How could it concievably save you $50,000 over a period of 5 years (and I'm being generous on the 5 years)? I just don't see the value in it. Perhaps someone here will convert me to the light side of the thermal imaging

We have control panels done as well and have found in many cases that motor connection from contactors have hot joint that would deteriorate and fail during production. I'm sure you'll all agree that it's a lot better to change a contactor during a planned down time rather during production. Also over the last few years We been alerted to possible problems on high current loads such air compressors and chiller units.

If your interested I may be able to post some of the picture for you to look at.

We also hire a company to do our boards and other devices.
Its good value, especially if you don't want to do the job yourself, but still get the benifit. It has mostly saved us on HV equipment. One session of unplanned downtime on this stuff costs the company about 5 times the cost of the entire survey.

Another option it to hire a camera for a period of time. It is much less than buying it and you can still get the evaluation. If you then decide you need one, you can easily justify buying one. If it is found to be just another bright idea that didn't work out, then you only lost the hire charge.

Alex Pel,

The plant I work in recently bought a IR camera. We had been using a outside contractor to come in every six months and do our equipment. They did a real good job, but the price on some of the camera's have come down. Long story short, we use it for both mechanical and electrical. There have been several times it has shown us a gear box or pump that had a bad bearing that was going to be a problem in the near future. I fell it is one of those things that if you use it, you will wonder how you ever got along without it. But if it is not used very often it will be a waste of money. Just my two cents.

I would agree that $50,000.00 is probably not cost effective but Thermal Imaging Camera's are now available for much less than this. If you want a well known brand then Fluke do a neat little unit.

IR Scan

We have a contractor come in once a year. Takes pics and gives a detailed report. One man goes with him for one day. MCCs and HV fuses and cut-outs. Every year he catches one or two very hot connections, or bad knife or fuse contacts. The price of cameras are coming down, soon we may buy one. Return on investment? If PMs are done regularly, 3 or 4 years, if not, then I'll say one year. In other industries longer. In our sawmill, we wear out disconnects at an alarming rate. Mostly handles and the wire lugs. Some paper mills only do it every two years.

Maybe Good Maybe Not

I've used IR scanners for over 20 years in various plants that I've worked. The first two required compressed argon bottles....the equipment has come a long way. But the closer you look the more things you will need to consider. What type of plant do you work in? Does it use a lot of large, heavy duty equipment? If so then this might be useful technology. But if you purchase the scanner then you need to learn how to read the images. The hottest object in the cabinet will be very easy to see. But you do not know if you are looking at a future failure or a normal operating condition. You must first build base line information. If you have multiple lines of identical equipment, then simple comparison is possible. Otherwise you will need to build a history. And that process greatly extends the payback on the equipment.

As for cost justification, this is a PM tool. Every plant has to determine if it makes more sense to spend money trying to prevent unplanned downtime or lose (spend) money due to breakdowns.

In short IR scanners are great tools for some operations. A waste of time and money in others.

Thermal imaging can be the single most valuable aid in reducing downtime, and discovering problems before they occur.

A minute to take a quick view of an MCC panel will show immediately if there are any hotspots (which equate to bad connections, which WILL become a failure.

It can also help troubleshoot everything from large drives, to circuit boards, as well as bearing, universal joints, and even pinpoint where a shaft may be rubbing against a guard.

Don't discount the technology, or the results.

That being said, whoever is trying to sell you a $ 50,000 camera either doesn't understand your industry, thinks you are a sucker, or was a former used-car-salesman/insurance-salesman/government-official.

That range of prices is for liquid nitrogen compensated ultra-precision devices that can resolve to the hundreth of a degree.

Take a look at some more reasonable handheld offerrings by companies such as Fluke. There are many industrial useful IR cameras in the $5000 and under range that can be operated in a point and shoot manner.

One of the best features, is the ability to print out an image, and archive it, so you can trend changes on a piece of equipment ever 3 months or so.

We also used to get regular surveys done by contract but a couple of years ago had the money available to purchase an imager.
Yes it is a good device for the predictive planned maintenance and has shown up hot spots and bad connections.
Remember though it does not have to be restricted to elctrical.
It can look at any aspect where imaging can show problems, Hot running bearings for example. Could it be of use in process measurements.
Do not dismiss it get all your department heads together to see if the entire plant can benifit.
If it cannot then weigh up the subcontract option.
Our is a Flir by the way and has done us a lot of good in all fields.

Stevebot is right about not restricting use to electrical equipment. We also use thermal imaging for checking insulation on refrigeration pipework. It can be used for finding cold spots as well as hot spots.